In the early 1980s, AT&T experimented with internal “ventures.” The Speech Processing Products “venture,” aka CONVERSANT, grew out of work begun by the #2 Service Evaluation System project. CONVERSANT was initially a self-contained business combining business, product management, sales & marketing, R&D, manufacturing, and product support functions in a single organization in Columbus, OH. However, that structure would evolve as the organization transitioned from a “start up” to a core product in the AT&T Business Communications System contact center portfolio. Soon groups in New Jersey and particularly Denver became part of CONVERSANT. Individuals scattered across AT&T would become involved as would small businesses dedicated to delivering voice response applications, sales organizations positioning the platform and applications, and the customers who embraced the product.
This site is dedicated to the Conversant product line; the people who created, sold, used, and supported it; and the impact it had during those remarkable decades.
The Product
Conversant began with the Models 80 & 32 but would progress through the Multi-Application Platform (MAP) models including the MAP/5P, MAP/40P, MAP/100P, the network MAP/100C, and a standalone platform the UCS1000. It would be extended further for network use as the Mega Conversant platform built in Denver.
Conversant was an interactive voice response (IVR) product but that wasn’t the whole story. AT&T had a voice mail product, Audix. Initially, the Conversant venture in Columbus, OH, and the Audix development organization in Denver, CO, were completely unrelated. That would change in the early 1990s and the fate of both IVR and voice mail would be intricately intertwined.
Although this site focuses on Conversant and the IVR “story,” it cannot be complete without covering Audix Voice Power and Intuity Audix.
The People
What began as a relatively small Bell Labs team and related AT&T business people would grow and, through Conversant product sales, encompass a vast array of individuals within and beyond AT&T / Lucent/ Avaya, related partner companies, & customers throughout North America and around the world.
The Impact
The Conversant platform was not the first Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform, but it would be among the market leaders for most of its history. Many enterprises big and small deployed Conversant for key business functions. However, the importance of Conversant was equally felt in the impact it had on the AT&T telephone network. Many of those major projects are memorialized here.